A 9.0 magnitude earthquake created a tsunami that ravaged
south and southeast Asia, as well as parts of Africa. The
wave reached from Somalia and Kenya to Malaysia. Thousands
of fatalities were reported in the Maldives, Sri Lanka,
South India, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Indonesia.
Three-story waves washed sunbathers into the sea, carried
away snorkelers, and swallowed up Hindu ritual bathers
celebrating Full Moon Day. A prison in Sumatra was torn open
by the tsunami, and hundreds of inmates fled. A baby was
washed from her father's arms. At least 25,000 died, and
millions were displaced. Entire towns were turned into
rubble. Corpses hung from trees and fences, and the rotting
bodies of humans and animals threatened to pollute water
supplies. It was difficult to bury the dead for lack of dry
ground. The earthquake was the largest since 1964, and
slightly altered the rotation of the earth. Other quakes
were felt in India's Andaman and Nicobar islands.

presenting the following documentary news (again, free for students!):

Hot Docs is bringing Academy Award nominee and Emmy-winner Jonathan Starck
to Toronto for the Canadian premiere of his critically-acclaimed LIBERIA: AN
UNCIVIL WAR. The film will be screened at Doc Soup on Wednesday, January 12 at 7
p.m. at the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor St. W.). Starck will attend for a
post-screening discussion.

LIBERIA: AN UNCIVIL WAR chronicles the final showdown of Liberia's
decade-long civil war. Facing the imminent capture of the capital city of
Morovia by a rebel army, controversial president Charles Taylor resigned in the
summer of 2003. Nevertheless, the battle raged on for weeks while the country
awaited the arrival of international peacekeepers.

Exclusive interviews with leaders from both sides and footage from the
front lines paint a gruesomely intimate portrait of the war, while situating it
in the larger political context.

LIBERIA: AN UNCIVIL WAR was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the 2004
International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam. The International Documentary
Association has also honoured co-directors Stark and Brabazon with a special
award for Courage Under Fire.

Individual Doc Soup tickets are $10 at the door. Admission is free for
students with valid ID, courtesy of The Toronto Star.

Below please find a list of resolutions regarding the ongoing violence against women in Juarez and Chihuahua City in Mexico. These resolutions were drawn up by a group of family members of the victims, artists and activists working in solidarity with them, and scholars whose research is contributing to bringing an end to this terrible wave of violence. If you support these resolutions, please sign below and PLEASE give your full name and email address. Signatures will be delivered to pertinent authorities in the US and Mexico.

Resolutions of the International Conference
“The Maquiladora Murders, Or, Who Is Killing the Women of Juárez?”
Hosted by the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA*

Recorded in Los Angeles, California, November 1st, 2003.

1. We declare that the kidnappings, tortures, and murders of girls and women in Ciudad Juárez and in the state of Chihuahua, committed since 1993 to the present, are crimes against humanity and we demand that their solution become a high priority in the binational and international agendas for the defense of human rights.

2. We demand that the governments of Mexico and the United States intervene in the investigation and solution of these murders, as part of their binational obligations to protect and defend the human rights of all inhabitants of the border area.

3. We demand that Mexico and the United States establish effective technical-legal cooperation and leads in order to investigate the linkages between transnational organized crime and the murders in Ciudad Juárez.

4. We demand that Hilda Solís, Democratic Congresswoman for the 32nd District of California, and Guadalupe Morfín Otero, Mexican Sub-Commissioner for the Prevention and Eradication of Violence Against Women in Ciudad Juárez, organize a binational alliance to intervene in clearing up the murders of girls and women in the region.

5. We demand an in-depth binational and international investigation into the identities of those individuals who might have information about the facts surrounding the murders of women of Ciudad Juárez, or who could be involved in them, and whose names have been denounced by the newspapers La Jornada and Reforma of October17 and 31, respectively.

6. We demand the formation of a binational and international human rights commission that:
a. investigates each and all of the cases of the murdered women;
b. has the authority to protect the life and safety of mothers, families, and friends of the victims, as well as that of the informants and defenders of human rights working on the cases;
c. has binational jurisdiction and capacity to impose sanctions; and
d. establishes a Mexico-United States human rights binational agreement to prevent future murders.

7. We demand that any commission formed by the governments of Mexico and the United States to investigate these crimes be designed in accordance with the human rights criteria established by the United Nations (Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention to Prevent, Sanction, and Eradicate Violence Against Women by Belem do Pará), so that it effectively addresses the murders of the girls and women of Ciudad Juárez and the state of Chihuahua.

8. We demand that the commission be granted the necessary functions and authority to discover the truth about the crimes, to carry out justice, and to permanently halt the murders and any kind of violence against the girls and women of Ciudad Juárez and the state of Chihuahua.

9. We demand that the human rights commissions and the international and Inter-American Courts of Justice acknowledge our demands and make the pertinent recommendations to our governments, exposing them before the international community in case they do not meet those recommendations.

10. We demand that the report written by the mission of experts from the United Nations who visited Ciudad Juárez in October 2003, directly examined some of the files of the cases of murdered and disappeared girls and women, and provided their technical-legal expertise to Mexican authorities, be made public and be widely distributed.

11. We demand economic reparation for the families of the murdered, disappeared, tortured, and raped girls and women of Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua for the moral injury inflicted and the emotional pain and distress caused by the failure of the government to investigate properly the commission of these crimes.

12. We demand that the government of Ciudad Juárez, its planning entities, and major employers in the region work jointly to provide the necessary infrastructure that will make Ciudad Juárez a safer place for everybody, in which women can have the freedom of movement, as any other human being, without fearing for their lives and their safety.